The Everything Guide to Mobile Apps: A Practical Guide to Affordable Mobile App Development for Your Business

Summary

Expert advice on how to succeed in the mobile market!

Experts estimate that mobile app revenues will nearly quadruple over the next few years, but for many business owners and entrepreneurs, figuring out how to affordably create and market an app is a daunting challenge. But it doesn't have to be!

With The Everything Guide to Mobile Apps, you'll learn all you need to know about creating a mobile app without breaking the bank account. In this book, you'll discover:
What to consider when developing an app
Which format best fits your needs and budget
How to stand out in the app market
The benefits of including apps in a marketing strategy
How creating an app can improve business revenue
From the development stage to marketing and beyond, The Everything Guide to Mobile Apps will help you develop an app that attracts more customers and boosts your business's revenue.

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The Everything Guide to Mobile Apps - Peggy Anne Salz

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novelty.

Introduction

LOOK AROUND AND IT’S clear that conditions are coming together for a perfect storm that will rip across the mobile app space, paving the way for mobile apps that will enable everything—from games and entertainment to education and health care to retail and daily productivity—and leave an indelible mark on the daily lives of many.

It all links back to the power of mobile, a true mass-medium that has been growing for years. Think of the printed word from the 1500s, sound recording from the 1900s, cinema from the 1910s, radio from the 1920s, TV from the 1950s, and Internet from the 1990s. The power of mobile lies in its simplicity, ubiquity, and incredible reach. Approximately three-quarters of the world’s population now has access to a mobile phone. That’s higher than the number of people who have clean drinking water (!). In a little over a decade, the number of mobile phone users has increased six times, from 1 billion in the year 2000 to a whopping 6 billion in 2012.

From the first mobile music ringtone, developed by Finnish technologist and entrepreneur Vesa-Matti Vesku Paananen in 1998, the early evolutionary path of mobile technology has been sharply focused on encouraging the passive consumption of prepackaged content. Not surprisingly, mobile downloadable content—from ringtones to wallpapers—became a multibillion-dollar industry.

At this point, mobile is about much more than buying novelty content. The advance of mobile apps now empowers people to call the shots. Armed with apps they have the means to make decisions, create and customize mobile experiences, conduct commerce and business, and bridge the digital and physical worlds around them. From life-simplifying tools to life-saving medical advice, mobile apps are poised to change the nature of commerce, banking, education, health care, news reporting, and political participation.

A study released by the Application Developers Alliance declares there is no end in sight for app market growth. Indeed, global demand for apps continues to exceed analyst expectations, with nearly half of the population in the United States alone having downloaded an app. The supply side of the equation also breaks its share of records as innovations in devices (the launch of the iPad mini), platforms (the long-awaited arrival of Research In Motion’s BlackBerry 10 operating system), use cases (branded apps for marketing and retail, and life-simplifying apps for health and wellness) drive a new phase of growth and creativity.

And if you think you have to be a developer to get in on the action, think again. The app ecosystem is also quickly evolving to accommodate people who are not just programmers. The full-scale arrival of app component marketplaces, the growing availability of easy-to-use programming tools, and the advance of cloud-based support and distribution are making it possible for anyone, anywhere to build an app.

From job creation, driven by companies that must scale up to meet massive demand, to an avalanche of opportunity unleashed as enterprises contract apps to boost productivity, support marketing, and improve customer service, apps are emerging as the growth engine of a new and vibrant economy. Connect the dots, and you’ll see that the App Economy has officially arrived! Now it’s time for you to get to work and reap the profits.

Turning your app into a serious business (if you’re an app developer) or architecting an app to achieve sustained market presence from your product or service (if you’re a business) requires you to know your audience, understand your market, and plan for success. In a way, it’s Retail 101 all over again, but there’s a catch: You have to do more than sell them; you have to convince users to insert your app into their daily routines. After all, app downloads mean nothing if people don’t use them again and again.

Because mobile devices are fiercely personal, they present an ideal means to reach customers during every step of their daily journey to deliver value, encourage interaction, deepen engagement, boost customer loyalty, and—ultimately—recruit true brand advocates and app fans. At the other end of the spectrum, apps help us get things done. They inform, entertain, communicate, advise, manage, streamline, simplify, and execute. If you want to create a winning app, you must have a broad base of knowledge that allows you to identify your target audience and delight them again and again.

CHAPTER 1

The App Defined

On April 3, 1973, a Motorola researcher and executive, Martin Cooper, changed history. On that day, he made the first successful telephone call from a handheld device to Dr. Joel S. Engel at AT&T Bell Labs. Since then, the world has seen an explosive growth in the mobile phone market.

The mobile phone has evolved from the kitschy box phones of the 1980s, to limited-capability feature phones, and now to the beloved smartphones of today. As the capabilities of mobile phones have developed over the years, a new way to consume and promote content has evolved as well: the app!

The term app, which was traditionally used in the PC market, has been adopted throughout the consumer market to refer to the method used to communicate, entertain, educate, shop, and spend money from your mobile phone. The mobile app ecosystem is quickly becoming a numbers game as every facet of the marketplace continues to see unparalleled growth. There are an astounding number of apps for consumers to download in today’s app market, and there are so many more opportunities to make it big in mobile on the horizon.

What Is an App?

A mobile app is a piece of software specifically designed to run on a mobile device, such as a smartphone or tablet. The app is usually downloaded and installed by the device owner, and once installed, a mobile app typically operates in tandem with the device’s native, or installed, operating system (OS). Very often, this allows the app to take advantage of some of the mobile device’s features.

If you are having trouble imagining this whole scenario, it helps to think of a smartphone or tablet as a portable computer. For example, on your computer at home, you download a picture from a family member’s e-mail onto your hard drive. You are then able to view the picture from your computer without having to connect to your e-mail. The picture lives on the hard drive, just like when you download an app onto your smartphone, the app lives on the smartphone and you can access it whenever you want.

App Basics

There are a number of confusing terms linked to mobile apps that you will often hear: native, hybrid, wrapper, and thin client. Unless you know exactly what you are looking to achieve when building a mobile app, these terms are relatively useless.

At this moment, all you need to know is that native, hybrid, wrapper, and thin client mobile apps are basically the same thing. They are based on a small application (small in data size, so only a little bit of information) that is downloaded and installed on a mobile device. Content such as pictures or video is then pulled over the Internet via a mobile data connection (Wi-Fi), and once the content is embedded in the device (your smartphone), the data connection can be closed and the content viewed offline (when you aren’t connected to the Internet).

In essence, you are downloading a piece of content to your phone. The option to view content offline is attractive to some app publishers, as it offers their customers a way to access their mobile app when a data connection isn’t available. For example, someone who takes an underground subway to work will not be able to receive a wireless Internet connection during their commute, so unless the content they want to view is already on their phone, such as existing within a downloaded app, they are in for a long, boring ride.

What should an app offer?

An experience that is more than a customer can get from an advanced mobile website. Having only one reason for placing an icon on your customer’s mobile device home screen is not good enough. This can be achieved very easily with a mobile website.

Once developed, mobile apps are typically distributed via a third party, commonly known as an app store or marketplace. Unfortunately, you can’t just post your app to the market without any hurdles. For almost all apps, there is a review and approval process, which adds time and complexity to getting any service to market. For some stores there is even a subscription fee before you can submit an app for review.

Types of Apps

If your ambition is to gain a presence on the home screen of a person’s device in order to encourage usage and loyalty, you do not necessarily need a mobile app. Gaining a presence for your brand and service on many mobile device home screens can be achieved very easily using a mobile web approach.

Mobile Web Apps

Mobile web refers to content that is viewed through a smartphone’s web browser. If you have a mobile version of your website, any mobile device owner with an Internet browser installed (Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox) can view your mobile website.

If your goal is to reach your customers and engage with them on a daily basis, an app might be the best choice for you. If you plan on asking your audience to access your mobile app multiple times a day, it is important to provide them with an easy-to-access method of engaging with your branded mobile experience. This is why building a mobile app is the appropriate choice.

There are many factors that will determine your approach to mobile technology. Mobile web is not better than mobile apps, or vice versa—no approach is better than the other. It really depends on: what you are looking to achieve, how much money you have to invest, how often you need to add new features and update your service, how loyal your typical customers are, how you want to win new customers. These will all factor in defining the right approach for you.

Mobile apps offer advantages such as their ability to use features of the mobile device and to store larger levels of content for viewing offline. Another advantage is they are often faster than the mobile web so you can find what you want more quickly. The disadvantages are that they need to be developed for individual devices and operating systems, they are more expensive to develop and maintain, distribution is often linked to a third party, and general discovery through search is far more restricted, as content can’t easily be presented to search engines.

A mobile app can be used to promote loyalty among users. This is only relevant if customers come back to you and your brand on a regular basis. For many brands from retail through to restaurateurs, that is simply not the case. If a customer typically has a simple interaction with your brand—buys a product from time to time or wants to find out where your store is located—an app can sometimes become a barrier. The need to download can deter a customer very easily.

Native Apps

Native apps look great and can be accessed without a web connection. Depending on your audience, you will need to develop and maintain an app for each platform and version you are looking to target. Building and maintaining multiple apps can be a drain on resources and expenses.

Native apps are distributed through a range of app stores either platform-specific or third-party app stores. Most app stores mandate a 30 percent revenue share and the use of their own billing system. One of the major challenges presented with app stores is discovery, so you need to understand how you can make your app visible among the other millions of apps out there. For example, you can run your own marketing campaigns to push users to your app in the app store and use different techniques to boost your rankings in the app store.

HTML5 Apps

Building your apps using HTML5 gives you ultimate control and flexibility. You can market directly to your consumers without the need to fight for position in app stores and have control over the payment solution you integrate.

HTML5 apps can be written once and deployed across all of the latest smartphones, with only a small amount of adaptation needed for each of the individual platforms, as well as PCs and Smart TVs. Development and wide deployment is therefore fast and cost effective, unlike native apps, where a new version is required for each platform. They can also be added as an icon onto the desktop just like a native app.

HTML5 is a new, fast-moving set of standards, so there are still some things you may need native code for, and due to the nature of how HTML5 is implemented, many observe that it is unlikely to ever be a replacement for native apps, as it will never be able to offer the same levels of performance or functionality as those offered through native app development. HTML5 works best on the latest smartphones.

Remember that if you choose your own method of monetization you will not be able to package up your HTML5 app and distribute it through Apple iTunes or other popular app stores, as they enforce the use of their own payment technology and take their 30 percent share.

Hybrid Apps

A hybrid app is basically an app developed in combination with HTML5 and native technology. While many confuse a hybrid app with a native app, there is a fundamental distinction: A hybrid application is built using web technology, and then wrapped in a platform-specific shell. The native shell makes the app look like native apps and, more importantly, makes it eligible to enter the app stores. In addition, app developers can also build in some of the native functionalities into a hybrid app, allowing it to access some of the native APIs (Application Programming Interface) and use device-specific hardware features, such as location and built-in sensors.

Cross-Platform Apps

Developers that want to reach all people on all platforms can choose to make a cross-platform app. Cross-platform frameworks—which include Appcelerator’s Titanium, Rhodes, and PhoneGap—are designed to limit the work that a developer or development team has to put into creating apps for iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, and beyond.

As with any development strategy, there are pros and cons to taking a cross-platform approach to mobile application design and development. The idea behind most cross-platform frameworks is to limit development time by having users write their code in one language that can easily be used by multiple platforms. This is where a cross-platform framework delivers significant benefits. Rather than having to write the specific action or sequence for each platform, a developer can just write the code once and then reuse those bits in later projects or on other platforms. But there is a downside to consider. The cross-platform tools can be limiting and lock you into a vendor relationship where, if you want to switch to another platform, the code you wrote before is likely not going to be reusable without a lot of work.

How Do Apps Work?

As previously noted, a mobile app is a small piece of software installed in a user’s mobile device that performs a specific function. During the download process, or potentially during the first use of the mobile app, a user will be prompted to accept terms and conditions. These are required to obtain consent to perform some of the tasks that the app may support. Core areas that are typically covered are: privacy, the ability to capture and use personal information, consent to use device location, and payment or commerce.

Once installed, the mobile app is typically presented as an icon on your customer’s mobile device home screen. When they click on the icon, the application typically takes a few seconds to launch. This start time will enable the application to use the built-in features of the mobile device. For instance, a navigation service will automatically identify your customer’s current location and reveal their position on a map. This is a case of the mobile app using the device’s global positioning or GPS capability. A publisher can use the device’s data connectivity to push content to the device so the latest content is available to customers.

Updating Content

The mobile device will search for or request content through the data connection and will fetch information over a web or Internet connection. One core advantage to a mobile app is that a high level of content and information can be stored or cached for viewing offline. Although a certain level of data can be cached in a mobile web environment, this amount is certainly not comparable to the capabilities of a mobile app.

Updates typically will require a customer to download a new version to replace the old mobile app. On the publisher’s side of things, new versions will need to be submitted to the app store or marketplace for approval. This is a good way to add new features but can bring issues if not carefully thought through. If not managed properly, you might update your app so frequently that your customers will have download atrophy, or even worse, you will have an app in the app store with poor functionality or bugs and your customers will have a terrible experience. Customer experience must be managed, information must be stored, and any service personalization must be protected.

One of the best ways to get your app noticed is to describe the app and the value it delivers. Get this right and people will be encouraged to download your mobile app to their mobile device.

Today’s Smartphones

For many, today’s smartphones seem more like mini-computers than the traditional dial-and-talk phones. That’s because, in essence, they are! As mobile technology continues to advance, anything someone would normally be able to do only on their personal computer can now be done everywhere they go.

Smartphones contain an operating system (OS), similar to a personal computer (PC). The most common OSs known today are Google’s Android OS, Apple’s iOS, RIM’s BlackBerry OS, Samsung’s Bada OS, Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS, HP’s webOS, and the Linux MeeGo. The OS is what allows the phone’s user to do everything they need to do, from taking pictures to making calls, checking e-mail, and watching the latest YouTube video. These operating systems are key to determining where a business should focus their efforts when considering building a mobile app. They are also essential factors in deciding where to focus your development time, energy, and resources.

The first Apple iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, who was then the CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007. A few months later in June 2007, the iPhone was released to the public, and the rest is history. Now smartphone growth is taking off!

According to Mary Meeker’s 2012 Internet Trends Report from Kleiner Perkins Caulfield Byers (www.kpcb.com), at the end of 2011, there were 953 million smartphone subscriptions. According to an IHS iSuppli Wireless Communications Market Tracker Report (www.isuppli.com), smartphones are expected to account for the majority of global cell phone shipments in 2013, two years earlier than previously predicted. Smartphone shipments in 2013 are forecast to account for 54 percent of the total cell phone market, up from 46 percent in 2012 and 35 percent in 2011. The year 2013 will mark the first time that smartphones will make up more than half of all cell phone shipments. By 2016, smartphones will represent 67.4 percent of the total cell phone market.

In addition to this growth in smartphones through 2016, it is important to understand the breakdown across the growth of the different OSs so that you are able to make informed decisions about where to focus your mobile app development efforts.

According to the Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker Report, published by International Data Corporation (IDC, www.idc.com), Android and iOS will see the bulk of the growth. IDC found that:

Android will remain the most shipped smartphone operating system over the course of the five-year forecast.

iOS will continue its run thanks to the momentum for the iPhone 4S in North America, Western Europe, and Asia/Pacific, specifically China. Growth will moderate over the five-year forecast given the large base Apple has accumulated.

Windows Phone 8 will gain share despite a slow start. IDC expects Windows 8 to be the number two operating software with more than a 19 percent share in 2016, assuming Nokia’s growth in emerging markets is maintained.

There will continue to be a market for BlackBerry OS–powered devices. This is true in emerging markets, for example, where users are looking for affordable messaging devices. However, the gap between the BlackBerry OS and its primary competition will likely widen over the forecast as the mobile phone market becomes increasingly software/app-oriented.

In regard to Nokia, the end of Symbian (Nokia’s OS) as a widely used smartphone OS came in 2011 when Nokia said all of its smartphones would eventually be powered by Windows Phone OS. This announcement precipitated an Osborne-like effect that resulted in a sharp decline in Symbian’s market share. It also led to share gains for competitive operating systems, namely Android and iOS. IDC expects Symbian-powered smartphone shipments to all but cease by 2014. Clearly, Nokia and Microsoft need to quickly switch Symbian OS user allegiances to Windows Phone 7 in order to maintain relevancy in the smartphone race.

Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)

One unique aspect of smartphone OSs is their ability to leverage advanced application programming interfaces (APIs). An API is a specification that is used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other. An API may include specifications for routines, data structures, object classes, and variables. APIs enable the phone to run third-party applications, or what are now commonly referred to as apps.

For example, if you own an Android smartphone and want to run an application you downloaded from an outside source (perhaps a popular game), the API acts as the middleman between your phone’s OS and that application. Without the API to negotiate between your phone’s OS and the game, you would not be able to play. This process is what makes the consumer experience and new opportunities for developers extremely interesting.

Make sure your app works on new devices and updated operating systems. There is nothing more frustrating for a customer than to suddenly find the mobile app that they have been using does not work on the new device that they have just bought.

Where to Start?

The important element for anyone thinking about targeting mobile customers is to start from the right point. Many make the error of starting by thinking that to target mobile customers, they simply need to build a mobile app. This is the wrong starting point.

You need to be clear why mobile is relevant and from the outset not get bogged down by tactical elements like what you are actually going to create. Be clear about the basics: what are your goals, who are your customers, what will deliver value to your customers, what do you want your customers to do? In short: You need to know your audience.

For some brands, mobile apps are the right way to go, for many others mobile apps are a dead-end street.

It is important not to get drawn by the hype and cool of mobile, as this will almost certainly impact your ability to deliver value and reap a return from your effort to develop and distribute a mobile app in the first place. Not everyone uses apps; not everyone has an iPhone. It is important to create a service that will deliver value to all your customers and your business. You need to deliver a great experience to keep them all engaged.

Ultimately, you can develop great apps that augment your brand in new and innovative ways. From hairdressers, to garages, to independent fast food outlets, all could benefit in some shape or form from developing an app.

Restaurants can design an app to cash in on the features that resonate with customers most: information on menus and nutrition value. Hairdressers could integrate an app with their booking systems, enabling people to see the spaces free for their haircut. The salon could then incorporate a loyalty scheme and give discounts to people who book through the app. Linking in social feeds could also encourage the salon’s customers to recommend to their friends, and get rewarded for it.

Garages could develop apps incorporating their skills and knowledge to provide more of a utility app for consumers, giving top hints and tips on how to identify an issue prior to taking their car into the garage. Again, this provides consumers with a reason to keep revisiting the app.

Building a Mobile Strategy

Mobile apps can do a lot. They can engage customers, drive footfall, encourage commerce, and deliver customer service. At the other end of the spectrum, mobile apps are also about entertainment and gaming.

How do you find the middle ground between what apps offer and your own business objective? Keep in mind that the role of mobile—as a medium—and apps as a channel to your customer can be divided into three groups:

Save time (utility, such as apps to help customers book restaurants or tickets on